Friday, June 10, 2016

A flicker of hope in the Middle East crisis

The Middle East peace process has been on a life
support system for years. The use of words like ‘stalled’ or ‘impasse’ don’t
describe the reality – especially after years of failure.

Over the years and on my occasional visits to the
region I have met many Palestinians, some Israelis and others who support
Palestinian sovereignty and the two state solution, who believe that the peace
process is dead.

Saeb
Erekat, who is the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation sounded
a warning at the beginning of June. He wrote; “With the 50th anniversary of Israel’s military and colonial
occupation of Palestine coming to a head, we have reached a critical juncture
within the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. For over 20 years, bilateral
negotiations between Israel and Palestine failed on account of Israeli
intransigence over its refusal to recognize Palestinian national rights and the
continuation and expansion of its settlement enterprise.”

The French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault last Friday
echoed that; “The possibility of two states, Israeli and
Palestinian, living side-by-side, in peace and security, grows more distant by
the day…The two-state solution is in serious danger. We are reaching a point of
no return where this solution will not be possible.”

He gave his assessment after a specially convened
conference by the French government in Paris on the Middle East peace process.
It was attended by the representatives of 26 states, as well as the UN
Secretary General Ban-ki Moon and representatives of the EU and the Arab
League. The purpose of the French initiative is to try and inject some life
back into the process through a peace conference to be held toward the end of
this year.

It is nine years since the last such conference in
Annapolis in the USA. That conference had aimed to ‘revive’ the
Palestinian-Israeli peace process and implement the ‘Roadmap for peace’. Since
then there have been a number of other efforts, most notably by George
Mitchell, who chaired the Good Friday Agreement negotiations, and US Secretary
of state John Kerry. They all failed.

Despite widespread diplomatic pessimism, fuelled
especially by the intransigence of Israel, the war in Syria has increased the
fear of Islamic radicalism and pressure on European governments to become more
active. In the five years of civil war in Syria over 300,000 people have died;
over five million have been displaced – over a million of these have fled to
Europe; thousands have died in coffin ships and rubber dinghies on the
Mediterranean; and the region is convulsed by war. The French Foreign Minister
told the Paris conference; “Islamic State
makes propaganda in the Palestinian territories. This extremely dangerous
context has raised awareness of the need for an initiative that creates hope.”

This is the context for last week’s French
initiative. Their objective is to organise a peace conference by the end of
2016 as a way of kick-starting new peace negotiations. The participants at the Paris
conference agreed to establish working parties to prepare economic and security
incentives to aid the peace negotiations.

Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis were
invited to Paris, which the French see as laying the groundwork for the peace
conference in six months’ time.

For the Palestinians Saeb Erekat described the
French initiative as “the flicker
of hope Palestine has been waiting for and we are confident that it will
provide a clear framework with defined parameters for the resumption of
negotiations. The international conference should be viewed as an opportunity
to create a negotiating environment in which power is equalized and law and
human rights prevail.”

Dave Gold the Director General of Israel’s Foreign
Affairs Ministry rejected the French initiative describing it as “doomed to failure.” In a statement from
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s office the Israeli government said that it
saw no benefit in the French proposals for a peace conference.

The Israelis say they want direct face to face
negotiations with the Palestinians. But such negotiations would not be between
equals and would place the Palestinians at a huge disadvantage. Saeb Erekat
explained: “Today it is essential that we
go from the bilateral path between occupier and occupied to a multilateral
framework that enables the international community to assume its responsibility
to enforce international law in Palestine.”

As the diplomatic niceties and the possibility of a
peace conference slowly takes shape life for the Palestinian people of the west
Bank and of the Gaza strip continues to deteriorate under a relentless Israeli
assault.

This takes many forms. In a policy similar to the
land evictions in Ireland in the 19th century the Israeli
authorities have been increasingly using forced expulsions and the destruction
of Palestinian homes to steal Palestinian land, often for Israeli settlements.

The Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights
has recently reported on more than 14,900 cases where Israeli identity cards
were revoked from Palestinians living on the west Bank and especially in East
Jerusalem since the occupation commenced. On a previous visit to Jerusalem I
visited Palestinian families who were subsequently forcibly evicted from their
homes. It is, as one Palestinian described it, a ‘demographic war’.

The United Nations reported that in February they
recorded the highest number of home demolitions since the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (UNOCHA) began recording in 2009. It reported that, “Israeli forces destroyed, dismantled or
confiscated 235 homes and other structures, displacing 331 Palestinians, including
174 children, and affecting another 740 Palestinians."

Further evidence of this tactic of expelling
Palestinians from their land; of disrupting the efforts of aid agencies trying
to support them, has emerged in a report published at the weekend. Entitled
‘Squandered Aid,’ the report, by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor
estimates that at least €65 million of EU aid has been destroyed by Israel.

In its report Euro-Med states: “Damage
to European Union-funded projects in Palestine during Israeli attacks and other
incursions is nothing new. However, following the union’s move in 2015 to label
Israeli settlement products, the number of EU-funded projects demolished or
confiscated by Israel increased dramatically. In the first three months of
2016, the number of demolitions per month, of either private property or
Internationally/EU– funded projects, increased to 165, from an average of 50
during 2012-2015. The United Nations office for coordination of humanitarian
affairs 'OCHA' has documented 120 demolitions against EU-financed buildings in
the first three months of 2016.”

Meanwhile
the environmental disaster in the Gaza strip worsens. UNWRA (United Nations
Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) reported that
there is a “severe water and sanitation crisis… Current
abstraction of water from the aquifer to meet the overall needs is way beyond
the recharge. As groundwater levels subsequently decline, sea water infiltrates
from the nearby Mediterranean Sea. Today, over 90 per cent of the water is
unfit for human use.”

Only a
quarter of waste water, the report says, can be treated and used in green areas
and some agriculture. Some 90,000 cubic metres of raw or partly treated sewage
is released everyday into the Mediterranean Sea, “creating pollution, public health hazards, and problems for the
fishing industry”.

And while all of this is going on Israel builds
settlements on Palestinian land in breach of international law. There are over
half a million settlers now living illegally on land stolen from Palestinian
farmers and workers and communities.

And then add to this the human cost of the violence.
The United Nations has reported the killing of 25 Palestinian children in the
last three months of 2015. By the end of December 2015 422 Palestinian children
were imprisoned by Israel and since October 2015 204 Palestinians and 32
Israelis have been killed – including four Israelis this week in Tel Aviv.

The Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie
Flanagan attended the Paris conference. I raised the issue of Irish recognition
of the Palestinian state with the Taoiseach Enda Kenny last week. He waffled a non-committal
response. I will raise the matter again. The people of Palestine seek and
deserve the same rights and responsibilities of citizens enjoyed in other
states. They also deserve our support. It is also important that in a world in
which so much else is happening that we do not forget what is happening to the
Palestinian people of the west Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The piece below is taken from Euro-Med Monitor's June 2016 report 'Squandered Aid - Israel's Repetitive Destruction of EU funded Projects in Palestine.'

Southern
Hebron

On
2 February, Israeli forces demolished more than 20 Palestinian buildings,
including 10 EU-funded structures in Area C of the West Bank. The bulldozers
arrived early that day in the villages of Jinba and Halawa, leaving some 110
people, including 60 children, homeless in one of the coldest months of the
year and jeopardizing the future of thousands of others. The structures had
been funded by the European Commission; others were co-financed by the
governments of Denmark and the UK as part of UN programs.

"Tuesday’s
operation was the largest of its kind in a decade, "reported the Israeli
NGO Breaking The Silence. Media described children digging in rubble for their
toys after the incursions. "Measures were taken in accordance with the
law," COGAT claimed. An EU spokesperson told the French press agency AFP
that, “the EU expects its investments in support of the Palestinian people to
be protected from damage and destruction.” The villages date back to the 19th
century, yet Israel designated the area as a military firing range in the 1970s
and ordered the villagers to leave, triggering a long legal battle.